Wednesday, August 24, 2005

100 years ago

The Mayor and Mayoress of Doncaster had been suffering from ptomaine poisoning, caused by eating pigeon pie provided for their guests at an entertainment at the Mansion House. They had taken the choir of Priory Place Chapel for a drive, and afterwards provided tea for them. Subsequently the Mayor and Mayoress and their daughter, and a number of the guests, who had eaten the pigeon pie, were suffering from poison. The Mayor and Mayoress had been confined to the house for several days, but had subsequently been able to go out for a few hours.

50 years ago

Readers were asked: "Have you ever had a programme on the wireless completely ruined by crackling caused by electric irons and other electrical equipment?" This heartfelt cry had come from a reader living on the north-eastern fringes of York who had gone on to say: "We have had this sort of thing frequently and there is apparently nothing the GPO can or will do about it. We used to live in York and were not troubled by this sort of thing, but since coming here it is apparent that neighbours iron on almost every day of the week, and while most of them probably use suppressed equipment, the odd one that does not can ruin many a programme, as we know to our cost."

25 years ago

Jane Flatt took a look into the future. After the Office Revolution she imagined an office with no typists, no filing cabinets or in-trays, no typewriters, invoices or ledger books, and above all, no paper. Dull metal machines clicking gently to one another, visual display units sending instant messages across the street, or half across the world, data and word processors recording silently the business of the company. Instead of messengers ferrying up and down, bearing memos and blueprints and photographs between departments, the press of a button would transfer words or pictures in seconds. And computers would store the pictures in their memories for instant recall. Instead of a typing pool bashing out letters to customers and contacts, computers programmed with any number of standard letters would communicate directly with similar computers in other offices. Nothing would get lost, nothing would be misfiled or thrown away by accident, and everything would be quiet and clean and efficient. Only the people would be the same, but there would be fewer of them. It was all due of course, to the ubiquitous micro-chip, that tiny computer component which was such a boon to mankind and such a monster to the individuals whose job it would replace.

Updated: 08:38 Wednesday, August 24, 2005